TRADITION OF THE MEXICAN NATIVES RESPECTING THEIR MIGRATION FROM THE NORTH.
In corroboration of Mr. Atwater’s opinion with respect to the gradual remove of the ancient people of the West toward Mexico, we subjoin what we have gathered from the Researches of Baron Humboldt on that point. See Helen Maria Williams’ translation of Humboldt’s Researches in America, vol. ii. p. 67; from which it appears the people inhabiting the vale of Mexico, at the time the Spaniards overran that country, were called Aztecs, or Aztecas; and were, as the Spanish history informs us, usurpers, having come from the north, from a country which they called Aztalan.
This country of Aztalan, Baron Humboldt says, “we must look for at least north of the forty-second degree of latitude.” He comes to this conclusion from an examination of the Mexican or Azteca manuscripts, which were made of a certain kind of leaves, and of skins prepared; on which an account in painted hieroglyphics, or pictures, was given of their migration from Aztalan to Mexico, and how long they halted at certain places; which, in the aggregate, amounts to “four hundred and sixteen years.”
The following names of places appear on their account of their journeyings, at which places they made more or less delay, and built towns, forts, tumuli, &c.:—
1st. A place of Humiliation and a place of Grottoes. It would seem at this place they were much afflicted and humbled, but in what manner is not related; and also at this place, from the term grottoes, that it was a place of caverns and dens, probably where they at first hid and dwelt, till they built a town and cleared the ground. Here they built the places which they called Tocalco and Oztatan.
2d journey. They stopped at a place of fruit-trees; probably meaning, as it was further south, a place where nature was abundant in nuts, grapes, and wild fruit-trees. Here they built a mound or tumulus; and, in their language, it is called a Teocali.
3d journey; when they stopped at a place of herbs, with broad leaves; probably meaning a place where many succulent plants grew, denoting a good soil, which invited them to pitch their tents here.
4th journey; when they came to a place of human bones; where they, either during their stay, had battles with each other, or with some enemy; or they may have found them already there, the relics of other nations before them; for, according to Humboldt, this migration of the Aztecas took place A. D. 778; so that other nations certainly had preceded them, also from the north.
5th journey; they came to a place of eagles.
6th journey; to a place of precious stones and minerals.